Snug — Privacy Policy
Last updated: 12 November 2026 · Terms of Use
1. Who is responsible for your data
The controller of your personal data under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the Snug team. Contact: [email protected] or the contact form.
2. What we process, why, and on what legal basis
| Data | Why | Legal basis (GDPR Art. 6) |
|---|---|---|
| Display name you choose, and an optional profile photo | To show other people in your rooms who wrote what | Providing the Service you asked for (6(1)(b)) |
| Your messages, photos, videos, voice messages, reactions and replies | To deliver them to your room and keep the chat history. In 🔒 encrypted chats we only ever receive these in encrypted form and cannot read them (reactions excepted) | Providing the Service (6(1)(b)) |
| A random member ID and signed “chat pass” for each room you join | So you stay signed in without an account, and to keep rooms private | Providing the Service (6(1)(b)) |
| Your IP address and basic connection data | To connect you, keep the Service secure and stop abuse (rate limits). Held briefly in memory only — Snug does not write IP addresses to logs or the database. | Our legitimate interest in running a secure service (6(1)(f)) |
| Push registration (optional): your device’s push address or token, an encryption key, and how many messages in each chat you haven’t seen yet | To send “new message” notifications when Snug is closed and show the number of unseen messages on the app icon | Your consent — your phone or browser asks you before any notification is shown, and you can switch them off any time under 🔔 (6(1)(a)) |
| Contact form: your message, email address and (optional) name | To answer you, handle access requests, reports of illegal content and privacy requests | Our legitimate interest in answering you, and legal obligations under the Digital Services Act and GDPR (6(1)(f), 6(1)(c)) |
| Links you share (link previews) | When you type a link, our server visits that web page once to make a preview card (title, short description and a small picture), which is sent along with your message. You can remove the preview before sending. The website sees a visit from our server, not from you, and people reading your message never contact it. The link is kept in our server’s memory for up to 30 minutes so the same page isn’t fetched twice, and is never logged. | Providing the Service (6(1)(b)) |
| Room passwords (if a room has one) | To protect the room — stored only as a one-way scrambled hash | Providing the Service (6(1)(b)) |
We don’t ask for, and you shouldn’t share, special categories of data (such as health information). If you choose to share such information in a chat, it is processed only to deliver it to your room.
We do not use cookies or similar technology for tracking, advertising or analytics, and we make no automated decisions about you. Photos and videos have their hidden metadata — including GPS location — removed when you share them: in encrypted chats this happens on your own device before anything is sent; in older chats our server does it on upload.
2a. Encryption — what we can and can’t see
- 🔒 Encrypted chats (all new chats, and private chats started inside them): messages, replies, photos, videos, voice messages and file names are encrypted on your device (AES-256-GCM) with a key that exists only in the chat’s invite links and on members’ devices. We never receive that key and cannot read this content — neither can anyone who gets hold of our server or its backups.
- What we can still see, because the Service needs it to work: display names, profile photos, room names, who is in which room and when, reactions, and the type and size of shared files. Notifications show the chat name and who wrote, never the message.
- Link previews in encrypted chats: to make a preview, your device sends only the link to our server, which fetches the page. So we briefly see links you preview — never the rest of your message. The preview card itself is then encrypted together with your message. Tap ✕ on the preview to send a link without one.
- Edited messages: when you edit a message, the new text replaces the old one everywhere (including in quotes of replies). We don’t keep the earlier version; others see a small “edited” label.
- Older chats without the 🔒 mark are not end-to-end encrypted: the server can technically read them while delivering them.
- Our database is encrypted at rest: names, room names, message text, replies, file details, reactions and contact-form messages are stored encrypted, so a copy of the database alone is unreadable. Photos, videos and voice messages from older chats are stored as ordinary files on our server (with location data removed) until they are deleted; in 🔒 chats they are stored encrypted.
3. What is stored on your device
Snug keeps a few things in your browser’s or app’s local storage: your chat passes, the secret keys of your encrypted chats, a short list of recent rooms, your open chats and your alert settings. They are strictly necessary for the Service to work, never leave your device except to talk to our server, and are not used for tracking. Clear your browser data (or uninstall the app) to remove them. The admin panel uses one strictly necessary login cookie for our admin only.
4. Who else receives data
- People in your rooms see your display name, profile photo and what you send there.
- Our hosting: the Service runs on a server we control.
- Push services (only if you turn notifications on): Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) on Android and in most browsers, Apple (Apple Push Notification service) on iPhone, Mozilla in Firefox. Each notification is encrypted so that only your device can read it; it contains the chat name and who wrote, never the message itself. The push service sees your device’s push address, the time, and that a notification was delivered.
- Video calls connect your device directly to the other person’s, so the other person can see your IP address. To find a route between devices, your device contacts a public “STUN” server run by Google (stun.l.google.com), which sees your IP address but no call content.
- Websites you link to: when you share a link with a preview, our server (not your device) requests that page and its picture, so the website sees a request from our server’s address and nothing about you.
- App stores: if you download the app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store, Google or Apple process data under their own privacy policies.
- Authorities: we may disclose information where required by law (for example a valid court order), or to report child sexual abuse material or a threat to someone’s life or safety.
We never sell your data or share it with advertisers or data brokers.
5. International transfers
Our server is located in Ireland. Google and Apple may process push and STUN data in the United States. Both are certified under the EU–U.S. Data Privacy Framework, which the European Commission has found to provide adequate protection; where that does not apply, they rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.
6. How long we keep data
- Messages (with their link previews): kept so that people joining later can catch up, until the room’s history is cleared or the room is deleted. An edited message keeps only its latest text.
- Photos, videos and voice messages: deleted automatically after 7 days, or earlier if the room’s history is cleared or the room is deleted.
- Profile photos: until you remove or change them, or their room is deleted; unused ones are removed automatically.
- Empty private chats are deleted automatically.
- Push registrations: until you switch notifications off, leave the chats, or the push service tells us the registration has expired.
- Contact form messages: until we have dealt with them and deleted them; we keep at most the latest 1,000.
- IP addresses: only in memory for a few minutes (for rate limiting); never stored by Snug.
7. Security
We protect data with HTTPS encryption in transit, signed chat passes, private invite-only rooms, strict security headers, rate limits, removal of location data from media, encrypted push notifications, end-to-end encryption of chats marked 🔒 and of all video calls, and encryption at rest of the information in our database (see section 2a). No system is completely secure; if a breach is likely to put your rights at risk, we will notify the Data Protection Commission and, where required, affected users.
8. Your rights
Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to its use, receive it in a portable format, and withdraw consent at any time (for notifications: 🔔 → switch off). To use these rights, contact us by email at [email protected] or through the contact form.
Because Snug has no accounts, we can only find “your” data if you can show us which it is — for example the room and display name you used, and access to the device you used. You can delete a lot yourself: remove your profile photo, use Leave, or ask us to clear a room’s history. We reply within one month. For 🔒 encrypted chats we can delete the stored data, but we can’t give you a readable copy of its content — we don’t have the key; your copy is on your device.
You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority. In Ireland that is the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie); you can also contact the authority where you live or work.
9. Children
Snug is not for anyone under 16. If you believe a child is using the Service, please contact us and we will remove their data.
10. Changes
We will update this policy if the way we handle data changes. The date at the top shows the latest version; for significant changes we will show a notice in the Service.
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